LOOK FAMILIAR?

Terrence Malick takes a break from making movies that look like perfume ads to make a perfume ad

He may have found his calling.
He may have found his calling.
Image: Screenshot/Guerlain
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Director Terrence Malick, best known for The Tree of Life, Badlands, and The Thin Red Line, has a poetic cinematic style that seems like it’d be right at home in a perfume ad. Now, it is.

Malick recently directed a commercial for French perfume maker Guerlain, which stars actress Angelina Jolie.

The minute-long, extended version of the spot features Malick’s trademark ethereal aesthetic and spinning camera shots, as well as cutaway imagery of trees and other elements of nature. Nothing really happens in the Guerlain spot and it has no discernible narrative—which fans of his feature films should find familiar.

But it does use the old heavy-eyelid advertising cliché. As Playlist previously noted, the commercial also repurposes a song—“Awakening” by Andy Quin—that was used in the trailer for Malick’s 2012 movie To The Wonder.

Malick joins a long list of filmmakers to direct fragrance ads in between movies, including Spike JonzeDarren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, Joe Wright, Baz Luhrmann, Wes Anderson, and Roman Coppola.

His next feature film, Song to Song, is reportedly due to premiere at South By Southwest later this month.